Today looks like it will be a re-run of yesterday. It will be very depressingly grey, and the afternoon temperature will be 10° C again. Once again there will be a 10% chance of rain falling at any time today, but no rain is shown on the weather chart. Tomorrow morning is looking far better. Sunny spells in the morning, and full sunshine in the afternoon. The temperature could touch 11° C for a short time. The BBC website forecast is very optimistic about the weather for tomorrow and the next few days. It shows loads of sunshine and the temperature reaching 12° C for a few days.
 
    Yesterday was a most depressing day, and of course that had consequences that came close to disaster levels....or maybe it was a disaster, but more about that later. It all hinged on the weather and the state of my health. My health was improving a lot, which was good, but it seemed like I would never feel well again, which was bad, although also nonsense.

  Some sunshine could have made a huge difference to my day yesterday. The one thing I hoped to do was to go out and take some photos of an anti ULEZ (Ultra Low Emission Zone) expansion rally being held in Bromley at midday yesterday. I've never taken any pictures of a "demo" before, and I don't think I would like the ambience of a full scale event in central London, but the Bromley one was easy to get to, and intriguing.

  Unfortunately the sky was dark grey. That made it feel cold, and I was worried that the cold grey air would trigger some strong coughing from me. When looking forward to the event a day or two earlier I had assumed I would be over my cold. I think I had probably beaten the infection by yesterday, but there seemed to still be a lot of clearing up to do, and that included occasionally coughing up some muck.

  While I stayed in the warm I did mostly feel OK, although I still didn't feel terribly dynamic. That latter feeling was made worse by feeling depressed, or "pissed off" as it would more commonly be called. That "not feeling dynamic" was expressed in it's highest form when it came to preparing dinner - I didn't prepare any ! I did prepare a nice salad for lunch though, but that was before I was feeling my worst.

  It might have been separated from it by as much as an hour, but my lunch had a dessert in the form of another slice of the old Madeira cake that has done so much to spoil my blood glucose readings over the last couple of days. That wasn't the worst thing. With no dinner prepared I made the not-too-clever choice of ordering fish and chips for my dinner. What made it worse was that it was very expensive, and not all that nice. The batter around the fish seemed like it was undercooked, and sort of soft and stodgy.  The fish inside seemed to be cooked OK, and I speculate that the oil it was cooked in was not hot enough to really make the batter really crispy.

  Of course the other problem is that the portion of chips was gigantic ! I am far from prone to stop eating because I have eaten too much, but I met my match when it came to those chips. The leftover chips were about the right size for a big meal. I put them in a sealed container, and microwaved for a minute or two to generate a bit of steam, and then sealed the container. The lid being sucked in shows they could be called "vacuum packed". The only problem is that they are contaminated with fish, and so I can't really use them as an accompaniment to any other meals. I think I might reheat them with a load of cheese on them for a very unhealthy, but potentially very nice meal later.

  That chips and cheese meal wont be tonight. In my depressed state I ordered the dubious mystery meat (donor meat) and chips for today. My health is taking a kick in the balls at the moment. On the other hand, despite all the depression, half about the weather, and half about my cold, it does seem my cold is slowly going away at last. My tissue consumption was quite low yesterday. My cough changed from bouts of dry coughing to occasional short hacking coughs that were far from dry.

  With none of my favourite evening TV programmes being shown on a Saturday I ended up going back to binge watching old Futurama episodes. After watching three in a row I fancied a break. I tried laying on my bed to read, but it seemed every time I laid down I would end up having to cough up a big plug of mucus, and that destroyed any hope of deep relaxation. Eventually I decided to check all the TV channels to see if there was anything I could watch.

  I found something that was worth watching again. I think it was originally a BBC documentary being shown on PBS America. Last night was probably the third time I watched it. It was about a stately mansion that was requisitioned for "war use" during WW2. It was Trent Park, and it was heavily bugged to listen to the conversations of high ranking German generals. There is more about it based on the BBC documentary here - https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-20698098 and also here - https://www.historynet.com/secret-luxury-prison-trent-park-helped-the-brits-spy-on-nazi-generals/

  One thing intrigued me about the documentary. It was how over 20 years before the secrets of Trent House, and also another two similar centres, were revealed, the writers of The Prisoner (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisoner) had come up with a similar idea. While in The Village, Number 6 (played by Patrick McGoohan) was under constant surveillance in the hope he would reveal why he resigned from the secret service. I wonder If the writers of the series were aware of what had been going on in Trent Park ?

  From maybe yesterday afternoon I was feeling considerably better as far as my physical health was concerned. I was aware that I had only occasional need to clear my nose, and I was hardly coughing at all. It wasn't until I lay down to go to sleep that the cough reared it's ugly head again. In one respect it was good that I did hardly any repetitive coughing, which had been mostly dry earlier. What I was doing once I was laying in bed, although also a couple of times earlier, was more akin to a cat coughing up a fur ball.

  I had to get my breathing just right to suck in sufficient air, and than one or two powerful coughs would bring up my own version of a fur ball !! It is all rather gross, and was also briefly uncomfortable. It happened a lot during the night, but on the plus side I only used about three tissues through the night, and I only had to change them because I had managed to blow holes through the tissue !

  I think I had originally fallen asleep before 11pm last night, and this morning I got up extra late. Between those times I got a lot of sleep, but it was so often disturbed sleep that I am sure it wasn't good sleep. It was after 8am when I got up, and I suspect I could have turned over, and got another hours sleep, but it was light outside, and somehow that made me think I ought to get up. Of course when I say light outside, I really meant bright medium dark grey !

  I could almost say "as expected" but really it should be unexpected that my blood glucose was not a lot higher this morning. After eating what seemed a huge pile of chips in the evening (even if that huge amount was only about half the total) I expected my blood glucose to have been really high. It was indeed rather higher than I am comfortable with, but 9.7mmol/l is still below the red danger line of 10.0mmol/l. Of course long exposure to even readings in the nines is most definitely not good for me. I am hoping that from Monday, with bright and sunny days expected, I will get a far tighter grip on my food intake.

  Today I have got off to a bad start - part of my breakfast was the last slice of the sweet Madeira cake that has contributed to my high blood glucose readings. Having it so early in the day means it affects will be well diluted, or even gone by tomorrow morning, but then tonight's dinner of Donor meat (aka mystery meat) with chips will completely sabotage tomorrow morning's blood glucose reading.

  The grey weather will make today another depressing day. There is one weak possibility of some fun this afternoon. I reported to Jodie that I was now well enough to partake in a beer tasting session this afternoon. Her reply was not encouraging. She and boyfriend are going away tomorrow, and it takes ages for Jodie to pack her bags and doing her cleaning and preening. I'm guessing that her warning that she might not have the time to come over will turn out to be that she definitely won't have time.

  I guess for now I had better go through the motions of getting me ready (having a shower) and getting the dinning room warmed and set up for drinking. After being distracted while writing this by getting too carried away reading some of the links I provided (and some links from those links) it is getting so late that it might not be too long before Jodie confirms one way or another. I'm not sure what my alternative plans might be. Maybe a shopping to trip to Aldi might be good to help become re-acquainted with the wide world outside my front door again.